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'Caste' system for Indonesian schools: Teachers criticize Nadiem's new zoning policy
Under the new school zoning policy, fewer seats are allocated to those live in the proper school district while more seats are given to high-performing students.
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Give your best!: Students, accompanied by their parents, line up to enroll at SMA 1 state high school in Depok, West Java, on Tuesday. (Antara/Yulius Satria Wijaya )
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ducation and Culture Minister Nadiem Makarim’s changes to the school zoning system may be popular among some parents, but experts and teachers have criticized them as moves that undermine the system’s main goal of providing quality public education for all.
“We strongly disagree with the changes,” Indonesian Teachers Association chairman M. Ramli Rahim told The Jakarta Post. “The new policy is a return to a ‘caste’ system for schools.”
First implemented in 2017, the zoning system requires state schools to prioritize enrollment for students who live within certain designated districts, with the aim of reducing the variance in state school quality and to put an end to so-called “favorite schools” – top state schools that have increasingly been filled by high-achieving students from wealthy families.
The system initially mandated that at least 90 percent of new students at a state school live in the school’s district, allowing up to 5 percent of seats to go to students with high academic achievements, while the remaining 5 percent was allocated for students whose parents moved to the area for work.
After widespread protests and complaints from parents who felt that their children were getting the short end of the stick, then-education minister Muhadjir Effendy issued a ministerial regulation mandating that only 80 percent of spots at any given school would be given to students based on district, while 15 percent would be based on academic achievement.
Nadiem’s new ministerial regulation on zoning – part of his Merdeka Belajar (Freedom to Learn) package of reforms – makes a more dramatic change to the system, lowering the number for students who live within school zones to 50 percent and increasing the number for high achievers to 30 percent. An additional category – students who come from poor families living outside the district – was added, with the number set at 15 percent.
“The essence of the zoning system policy is to create an ‘affirmation’ track for students and families that hold KIPs [Indonesia Smart Cards] and are from a lower economic class, and to allow for an increase in the achievement track to up to 30 percent for those who want it,” Nadiem said during the announcement of Merdeka Belajar last week.
